Ambassador From Jordan Freed by Captors in Libya

By RANA F. SWEIS and KAREEM FAHIM

May 13, 2014

AMMAN, Jordan — The Jordanian ambassador to Libya, who was taken hostage by gunmen in the Libyan capital last month, was freed and returned to Jordan on Tuesday after his government agreed to release a Libyan citizen serving a life sentence on terrorism charges, officials in both countries said.

The ambassador, Fawaz al-Itan, arrived at a military airport in Jordan on Tuesday and said he had been treated well in captivity.

Nasser Judeh, the Jordanian foreign minister, said Mr. Itan’s captors had ties to the Libyan citizen, Mohamed el-Dressi, who was convicted in 2007 of plotting to blow up Jordan’s main international airport. He did not specify what those ties were. Mr. Dressi flew to Libya on Monday.

The apparent exchange of Mr. Dressi for Mr. Itan immediately raised concerns that it would embolden militant groups in Libya, which have turned to kidnapping to win concessions at home and abroad.

Fawaz al-Itan, Jordan's ambassador to Libya, spoke to the news media upon his arrival in Amman.

Majed Jaber / Reuters

Libya’s central government has so far been powerless to halt waves of killings and abductions in its cities, carried out by armed groups that grew out of the uprising that ousted Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi three years ago. Mr. Itan was the highest-ranking diplomat to come under attack in the country since 2012, when militants killed J. Christopher Stevens, the United States ambassador, in the eastern city of Benghazi. At least one Tunisian diplomat kidnapped in recent months remains in the hands of armed militants.

“Thank God for the safety of the state of law,” Mahmoud Shammam, a former Libyan government official, wrote sarcastically on Twitter after the apparent exchange was announced. “Visit Libya so we can kidnap you!”

Speaking soon after Mr. Itan arrived in Jordan, Mr. Judeh, the foreign minister, tried to play down suggestions that Mr. Dressi had been exchanged for the ambassador, saying that Libya and Jordan had simply “accelerated” negotiations they were already conducting over Mr. Dressi. Libyan officials have been lobbying countries around the region, including Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, to release Libyan prisoners, saying that many of them were dissidents imprisoned at the behest of Colonel Qaddafi.

Mr. Judeh asserted that Mr. Dressi had not been freed and would serve out the remainder of his prison sentence in Libya, but Libyan officials appeared far less definite about that. In a television interview on Tuesday, Saeed al-Aswad, a Libyan Foreign Ministry spokesman, repeatedly avoided questions about whether Mr. Dressi had been taken into custody when he arrived, saying only that “Mr. Dressi is in Libya.”

Suleiman Fortia, who led a Libyan committee that pressed for the release of overseas detainees, called Mr. Dressi a political prisoner and said that Libya had been trying to negotiate his return for two and a half years. Mr. Fortia said that the Libyan Justice Ministry would consider Jordanian evidence against Mr. Dressi, but that “maybe this was information provided by Qaddafi.”